Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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because the people were very isolated and very lonely, and so those moments of
warmth, although they were short, were very intense. 590
The other source of inspiration for the film was his own childhood on an isolated farm
(an aspect which has been examined in Chapter Two).
In Vigil I wanted to recreate my childhood perception of the world I had
inhabited. I wanted to see a small, intense child on a farm by himself,
combating fierce nightmares and fantasising victories over imaginary foes. At
the same time I wanted to convey how a child seems to see the real world in
oblique glimpses, and like a detective gathering clues, has to work out what is
going on about him. For a long time, I just kept notebooks, writing down ideas,
or characters, or images, trying to find a story. Gradually the child began to
form, and it turned into a girl. 591
The Scripting Process
In terms of reaching an understanding of Ward’s aesthetic and working methods, it is
worth examining the process of scripting the film in some detail. While the story was
based on an original idea by Ward, Graham Tetley was brought in to help develop the
script, initially to write some dialogue. When Tetley first became involved (through a
mutual friend of his and Ward’s, Philip Tremewan), Ward had begun to develop the
characters of Ethan and Toss, but, according to Tetley, “he wasn’t working from that
[character-oriented] point of view. He was working with a series of images, and he had
cards with a series of images that he had drawn himself”. 592 Some of these images were
of Ethan with a deer over his shoulder, Ethan calling the deer, Ethan with the hawk
flying by and Elizabeth practising ballet and doing the “vertical splits”. Tetley saw
Ethan as a kind of “Laurentian figure” and comments that: “It was very hard to get past
that sort of figure that just comes out of the landscape and bellows, you know. Quite an
old-fashioned figure I think, in some ways”. The characters of Birdie and Toss were
quite undeveloped at this stage, although Ward had some images of Birdie being
brought home across the ploughed field in a wheelbarrow, and of Birdie sitting on top
of the tractor. He clung to these images as though they were visions he had received –
590 Martin, "Vincent's Vigil," 16.
591 Ward, Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes 69.
592 Lynette Read, interview with Graham Tetley, 4 December 1998.